Confronting Evil: New Retelling of Vampire Legend pays Tribute to 1922 Black-and-White Classic
DIRECTED BY ROBERT EGGERS/2024
Many of the terrifying ideas that periodically haunt our imaginations have their origins in ancient myths.
To make his latest film as frightening as possible, director Robert Eggers relied on Eastern European legend. No one would see his vampire as a Hollywood heartthrob!
“The vampire of folklore is not a nobleman. The vampire of folklore is not a suave, dinner jacket-wearing seducer,” Eggers wrote in an essay published Dec. 27 in The Guardian. “The vampire of folklore is a corpse. An undead corpse. These early vampires are visually closer to a cinematic zombie, often engorged with blood, their faces sometimes pooling with blood under their rotting skin, maggot-infested, in a state of terrifying putrefaction and decay.”
The result is a brilliant remake of a silent movie released more than 100 years ago. Eggers’s Nosferatu (a Romanian term for “the offensive one”) opened Dec. 25 and earned more than $40 million in its first five days.
Eggers follows the storyline offered in 1922’s Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror. This black-and-white masterpiece (directed by F.W. Murnau and produced by Albin Grau) was based on Irish author Bram Stoker’s classic gothic novel “Dracula,” released in 1897.
In Eggers’s Nosferatu, newly married real estate agent Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) accepts a commission to execute a contract with Count Orlok of Transylvania to purchase a run-down mansion in his German village of Wisborg. Thomas believes this will improve his ability to better provide for his wife, Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp).
However, Ellen fears that Thomas is walking into a trap. She has been gripped since childhood with terrifying visions, which cause her to endure seizures.
Orlok controls Ellen’s dreams, and using Thomas to buy land in Wisborg is part of his plan to eventually control Ellen’s body as well as her thoughts. After all, vampires sometimes lust for more than just blood.
Ellen pleads with Thomas not to go, but Thomas dismisses her concerns. He embarks on his trip to Orlok’s castle in the Carpathian Mountains.
But when he secures a room at a nearby inn, he senses that peril is just around the corner. Local residents are terrified of Orlok and carry out a peculiar ritual to protect themselves from vampires.
Thomas is unnerved when he meets Orlok. Casting Swedish actor Bill Skarsgård as Orlok helps make him an imposing figure (Skarsgård is 6’4” in height). The Count insists on completing the property transaction at once — late at night.
Eggers does an excellent job of showcasing the ancient myths held about vampires. As he wrote, he wanted to connect this aspect of his story with the historic perception of vampires rather than the popular image of latter eras.
Many film and television projects involving vampires have presented them as sexually alluring individuals: Frank Langella as the title character in 1979’s Dracula; Jonathan Frid as Barnabas Collins in the ABC soap opera Dark Shadows; Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen in the Twilight movie series.
Eggers, though, goes against this trend. We don’t often get clear views of Orlok’s facial or bodily features because they are obscured.
This adds to Thomas’s growing concerns about his safety and the sensibility of allowing Orlok to live in his village. And when we do see more of Orlok’s body, it is just as Eggers envisioned it: rotting flesh with numerous unhealed wounds.
Orlok’s move to Wisborg spells trouble for this German village. He brings plague-infected rats with him on a ship, and the rats terrorize the villagers by spreading disease.
Professor Albin Eberhart von Franz (Willem Dafoe) is the only person who fully understands the danger that the people of Wisborg face from Orlok. But he is an outcast in the academic community because he has studied and firmly believes in the occult.
Von Franz turns conventional wisdom on its head. He sees modern scholarship, not superstition, as a stumbling block.
“I have seen things in this world that would’ve made Isaac Newton crawl back into his mother’s womb,” von Franz says. “We have not become so much enlightened as we have been blinded by the gaseous light of science. I have wrestled with the devil as Jacob wrestled the angel in Peniel. And I tell you, if we are to tame darkness, we must first face that it exists.”
This is Dafoe’s second film project pertaining to Nosferatu. German actor Max Schreck portrayed Count Orlok in the 1922 version of this movie, and Dafoe played Schreck in the 2000 Gothic thriller Shadow of the Vampire, directed by E. Elias Merhige.
That film presents a fictionalized story of how the Murnau/Grau Nosferatu was created. To make as realistic movie as possible, Murnau (John Malkovich) hatches a dubious plot.
Schreck is actually a vampire, but Murnau fails to inform anyone else of this fact. He tells other people on the set that Schreck is a very eccentric actor who wishes to remain in character during production. Murnau secretly promises Schreck that he can have his way with the lead actress in the movie, Greta Schröder (Catherine McCormack), once the film is completed.
However, Murnau becomes agitated when Schreck begins feasting on members of the cast and crew. This interrupts his production schedule and risks letting everyone else discover Schreck’s true identity.
Where Merhige’s Orlok is weaselly and devious (Dafoe received an Academy Award nomination for his role), Eggers’s Orlok is overwhelmingly malevolent. The only thing alive about this centuries-old corpse is his evil persona.
The cinematography in Eggers’s retelling of Nosferatu is phenomenal. Each scene builds the suspense driving the narrative. The special effects do their part in helping create a sinister feel to the experience.
Murnau’s Nosferatu was an unauthorized version of the “Dracula” story, and a court ordered all prints of the movie destroyed after Stoker’s heirs sued for copyright infringement. Fortunately, some copies survived to showcase the director’s talent for conveying an ancient legend.
Eggers pays tribute to the original Nosferatu by retaining important elements of the vampire myth. As von Franz implores anyone who will listen, the first step in defeating supernatural evil is acknowledging that it exists. Eggers succeeds in breathing new life into the undead.